HTC One max Review - It's Huge
by Brian Klug on October 28, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Mobile
- One
- Snapdragon 600
- Android 4.3
- One max
Cellular
Cellular on the One max is pretty much the same story as the One, and another shared bullet point. The top and bottom metal cutouts are still the radiative surfaces of the antenna, and there’s still transmit and receive diversity as well to mitigate any unwarranted antenna detuning from holding the device. The unit I was sampled has LTE banding for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), but there’s appropriate banding for Asia, Sprint (a tri-mode device with 800/1900 MHz and TDD-LTE on 2600 MHz) and Verizon (700 MHz and AWS), according to the HTC specs page.
The baseband inside the One max is again shared with the One (Qualcomm’s 2nd generation multimode LTE MDM9x15 family), although the One max does have a bit more band support for the USA LTE on Sprint and Verizon, so the front ends are different.
WiFi
Interestingly enough with the One max we see HTC going to Qualcomm Atheros for the WLAN and BT combo, best I can tell this is the WCN3680 which is probably a bit cheaper to include than the BCM4335 we saw in the One. It’s still a single spatial stream 802.11ac capable part, meaning a PHY rate of up to 433 Mbps if you’re in the right channel conditions with 80 MHz channels on 5 GHz. The WCN3680 combo is the 802.11ac successor to WCN3660 which we saw in a number of phones last generation, and is accelerated by the SoC. WCN3680 also does BT 4.0, and FM Rx/Tx if applicable.
To test throughput on the One max I used iPerf the same way I have for a while now. Subjectively there are no complaints from me about WLAN connectivity on the One max, no random dropouts or issues, and Sense 5.5 thankfully still includes the WiFi frequency band manual selection option.
I saw the WCN3680 solution inside Moto X already, it’s interesting to see it in the One max. I believe the One mini uses its 802.11n cousin, WCN3660 as well, probably again for cost reasons.
Speakerphone
Although Beats is gone since that partnership has ended as of the One max, the device still seems to retain everything that made it sound great. There are still the larger-than-typical speaker chambers, big speaker grilles on the top and bottom, stereo sound, and importantly the TFA9887 speaker amplifier and protection part from NXP. In addition there’s still the TPA6185 headphone amplifier as well.
Beats always seemed to be an audio compressor that ran on the DSP, ostensibly through the Hexagon DSP access program or something, and that’s what’s absent on the One max. There’s no toggle under settings for enabling or disabling it, nor the Beats branding, but to be honest I almost always disabled Beats on the One anyways since it was a fair amount louder with it disabled. What made the One great was all the hardware behind the speakers, not so much the software compressor.
The One max goes plenty loud just like the original One. I went ahead and added the One mini and 5s to the chart too, just to check whether things have changed much, in addition to the Galaxy S 4 and Note 3. The One max basically performs like the One with Beats turned off, which isn’t a surprise since it isn’t there anymore. There’s also no detectable saturation, and the One line remains the only device that doesn’t sound tinny or rattly with overemphasized highs and lacking mids. I suspect the A weighting I selected a while ago for measuring might be a contributing factor as well. Either way you’re not going to be wanting for more loudness on the One max, and the inclusion of front firing stereo speakers makes for a completely different listening experience.
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Steven JW FCK - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
"I’ve said my part already on microSD cards and the fact that they’re going the way of the dodo in smartphones, I just don’t need one anymore, and definitely not at the expense of build quality. It is convenient not having to use a SIM ejector tool though, even if I carry one around all the time anyways"I'm sorry, you carry around a sim card removal TOOL, at all times with you, and you don't think micro SD cards are relevant any more? I don't think you are qualified to write a review about this phone if that is your opinion. I mean you would rather use a cloud/pay the extra money for inbuilt storage, than use an affordable, replaceable, micro SD card... But you paid to have a sim card removing tool, and then chose to wear it upon you? At all times?...
10101010 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'm glad to see that you are not letting this issue with Brian's Klug's anti-local storage bias slip away. The sad fact of the matter is that most reviewers are notoriously biased. Some are biased due to ignorance, some are biased due to payoffs, many are biased due to both.The fact that Brian Klug has some sort of hate trip on SD cards is not surprising. All the big money players in the US want to get rid of local storage so they can (a) increase data revenues (b) mine and sell more data (c) comply with NSA directives to collect more data on people. So we have one of Anandtech's top tier reviewers going off on how bad micro SD cards are, i.e. implying you cannot build a high quality phone if it has a micro SD card. And then the same reviewer disparages the many millions of people who depend on SD cards every day as some sort of unimportant minority.
It seems obvious to me that objectivity and balance have been lost, that the reviewer is just a tool pushing an agenda.
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I clearly am an agent of the NSA and this is a long-game to get all of your data. Clearly.-Brian
nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
So with the same logic laptop should get rid of SD slots too, especially macbooks with SD card sticking out. Heck, earlier macbook pros didn't have one!fenneberg - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Still dissing, eh..PC Perv - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I don't think what 10101010 said translates to your intelligence, lol. For one you are not really a big money player. I think what 10101010 meant is that you happily obey.Dentons - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Wow, your arrogance is astounding.Stop listening to your friends in the phone manufacturing business for a minute and start listening to the technical crowd that makes up the majority of your readership.
piroroadkill - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Hey, HTC, how about the Butterfly S?dawheat - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'm having a tough time liking the One Maxx - it's such a big phone for .2" screen increase over the Note 3, with the on screen buttons eating a decent part of the increased real estate.Also the Note 2 was pretty heavy, the Note 3 was a nice decrease in weight. The difference in weight between the Note 3 and One Maxx is close to the difference in weight between the iPhone 5 and Note 3.
Mondozai - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Well, the fingerprint issue isn't really resolved yet. We will have to wait and see how the security aspect goes. Still, my guess is that Apple is probably better at this generally than Android OEMs, specifically 2nd tier ones like HTC.This seems like an unnecessary review, especially as many much bigger launches were ignored. Who will buy HTC One Max? Very few people. HTC is going down anyway.
I'm still waiting for the mother lode: Nexus 5.
I also hope Brian can overcome his WP8 bias and review a few Nokia phones out this fall.